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India Joins Nuclear Market
figona brings news that India will be allowed to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). A waiver was approved yesterday that provided an exception to the requirements that India sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. This means India will be able to buy nuclear fuel from the world market and purchase reactors from the US, France, and Russia; something it has been unable to do since it began nuclear testing in 1974 (which inspired the creation of the NSG). The waiver does not include terms to cut off access if India resumes nuclear testing, but the US Congress drafted a letter stating their willingness to do so. Opponents of the waiver have called it a "non-proliferation disaster."
And Pakistan might just get the same treatment India just got, actually. After all, without their help militarily, fighting wars in Afghanistan would be much more difficult.
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Any danger the arsenal represents probably wouldn't even double if it increased 100 fold. Nuclear fuel is something the world needs right now, if all the hype about global warming is as bad as they say it is. Not only that, but cheaper nuclear fuel -> cheaper power -> better economy -> less poverty.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
India is a stable democratic country.
*bzzzt* - Russia was admitted to the original Non-Prof club during the Cold War by treaty, when they had a nuclear weapons fleet that matched the US'. When the Cold War ended, they had tens of thousands of nuclear warheads (up to many multiple megatons for some of 'em) and a damaged economic infrastructure (at the time) that lent itself all too easily towards selling a few of the warheads on the down-low.
We basically got very nice with Russia to prevent some jackass from buying/stealing a nuke or two and then using them somewhere else.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
People in the US especially seem to think of India in terms of snake charmers and cheap IT, forgetting that we are the second largest nation on earth, with genuine security concerns.
With China sitting to our east and making noises (usually, very loud noises) and a particularly unstable Pakistan to the west who got most of their nuclear tech from China, we really don't have a choice.
Besides which, far too many other pieces of tech cannot be sold to India because they may kinda sorta have some possible application in one corner of the fine art of nuclear weapons manufacture. This can finally stop now.
Finally, the whole deal means that we can now start having safety equipment for our nuclear program, which we haven't been able to obtain for years now.
Anyway, you probably don't know the amount of flak the government has taken over this deal... There's talk from lots of sides about "selling our sovereignty", because there will now be periodic inspections of all nuclear facilities by the IAEA.
Anyway, Arbitrarily restricting possession of nuclear weapons to those nations that tested before 1967 is not exactly a solid foundation for the NPT. It should have been quite blindingly obvious right back then that several nations, even reasonably stable ones, would have severe reservations about such an imbalanced treaty.
Because the NPT is a biased treaty of HAVES and HAVE NOTS. It basically says that the countries that HAVE nuclear weapons can continue to have them forever and those that don't can never have them forever, thereby creating a hierarchy of powers. India rejects this as highly discriminatory and wants a world where all nuclear weapons are eliminated. Since that sounds impossible, India went ahead with its nuclear program to defend against its neighbours like China and Pakistan.
They claim ethical reasons. Basically China had nukes and a sometime-hostile attitude to India, so India decided to develop its own nukes. If India had them, Pakistan had to, so they refused to sign the treaty. Israel also refused to sign as part of its on-going policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nukes.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
I don't quite understand what this is being potrayed the way it is in the media. Especially here at slashdot where I thought it was fair assumption that most of its readers are bit more educated than average bunch that can discern fact from, "fluff". Hence are couple of things for everyone to know: India's first nuclear test was on May 18, 1974, hence a fair assumption it has had a nuclear weapon ever since. India also has a nuclear capable missile atleast since 1988.(lookup Prithvi) This nuclear deal is for fuel for Power plants Part of the deal is an agreement that India will open up its civilian nuclear facilities for inspection (Before this, it was 0 access) India also has approx 25% reserves of Thorium (nuclear fuel of future), so it'd make sense to let it in for current, "Uranium" fuel to somehow guarantee, "Thorium" supply in future. Indian government itself is taking a beating at home because its being seen as a way to suppress India's nuclear ambitions by west. Power(electricity) is one the major problems in current India, and having more of it can only be beneficial to the society at large. On the other hand, only exception I see to all this is that India's Military/Defense/Weapons Nuclear sites are still off-limits to inspections, and this deal can possibly free up more spent nuclear material for India to experiment with. That should have been accounted for in a bit more responsible manner.
I am at loss with words...
Or dont you know the Pakistanis were given their nukes by the Chinese. The country is a feudal military dictatorship. Simply not the kind of society to be able to develop Nukes on their own. They are good enough to take Chinese nukes and rebrand them though.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Read this latest, from the American Institute of Physics: http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_61/iss_9/47_1.shtml Scroll down to the bottom and look at the bullet points: # In 1982 China's premier Deng Xiaoping began the transfer of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan and, in time, to other third world countries. Those transfers included blueprints for the ultrasimple CHIC-4 design using highly enriched uranium, first tested by China in 1966. # A Pakistani derivative of CHIC-4 apparently was tested in China on 26 May 1990. --- Why was this published only now? The US has known about this information for quite some time, but sat on it, for security reasons. But now the US is finally telling China that enough is enough, and that it can't expect to wantonly proliferate nuclear weapons technology without facing consequences.
One of the areas where Pakistani support is most needed is in Waziristan. This is a region which borders Afghanistan and is technically part of Pakistan, but is effectively controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- it's generally regarded that if Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri are still alive, this is where they are operating from. I imagine that if India were to attempt to engage in military activities there, even though it isn't really controlled by Pakistan, Pakistan would still see it as an act of war against them. Plus they'd need to fly over a decent chunk of Pakistan to get there.
The only thing preventing India from whooping Pakistani ass is the Chinese and American support the Pakistanis have. If the Americans really wanted Pakistan to be taken out all they would have to do is pressurise the Chinese to back off and stop gifting F 16s to Pakistan and India can take care of the rest.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Let's carry on;
The US is not a democracy since not everyone can vote, voters have been arbitrarily stripped of the vote for imagined offences, and the popular vote can be overridden by an electoral college.
It is an imperialist state that has attacked more countries than any other in the last century. It is actively and aggressively exporting its ideology. It has the only state to have used a nuclear weapon.
Caste itself is a religious concept
It's a "quasi"-religious concept. Religious leaders bent on preserving their power over society claim that it is, but it isn't. Normative scripture does not mandate casteism as a static system of stratification. Casteism mandates are as much true for the Muslim Imams with their "biradaris" and "Ashraf/Ajlaf" divide as it is for the Brahmanical clergy (more so actually, since the Muslim Imams get away with it without getting lynched by irate mobs, particularly the Dawoodi Bohra Dai Syednas in western India).
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
The problem with Thorium is that it's a decade or two away from commercial use. India needs power NOW. And oh, they aren't mothballing their Thorium programme -- if anything progress has been good.
Go somewhere random
They got divided by the British empire over the ambiguous decision of calling the zone with mostly Muslims "Pakistan".
ORLY ?
What is now Pakistan was in prehistoric times the Indus Valley civilization (c. 2500 - 1700 B.C.). A series of invaders - Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and others - controlled the region for the next several thousand years. Islam, the principal religion, was introduced in 711. In 1526, the land became part of the Mogul Empire, which ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to the mid-18th century. By 1857, the British became the dominant power in the region. With Hindus holding most of the economic, social, and political advantages, the Muslim minority's dissatisfaction grew, leading to the formation of the nationalist Muslim League in 1906 by Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876 - 1949). The league supported Britain in the Second World War while the Hindu nationalist leaders, Nehru and Gandhi, refused. In return for the league's support of Britain, Jinnah expected British backing for Muslim autonomy. Britain agreed to the formation of Pakistan as a separate dominion within the Commonwealth in Aug. 1947, a bitter disappointment to India's dream of a unified subcontinent. Jinnah became governor-general. The partition of Pakistan and India along religious lines resulted in the largest migration in human history, with 17 million people fleeing across the borders in both directions to escape the accompanying sectarian violence.
My bold.
That reads to me like certain powerful Muslims asked for the partition. But then how would you know, you're only half Afghani.
China, India and Pakistan are large, populous countries. Invading them isn't as easy as you think (with India and China, even airstrikes will need to cover a lot of surface area).
Re India's first strike policy:
Go somewhere random
Muslim resentment at that time likely was true, since before the British they were the ruling class (Mugal). But that doesn't support the assertion that India would take out Pakistan if it wasn't for the US, China, etc., which was what hurricane was responding to. Rise of BJP stoked good bit of Hindu nationalism, and ethnic/tribal/religious clashes seem somewhat routine in certain regions, but despite it all, I highly doubt India as a country would wage/support whole sale invasion of Pakistan. For what it's worth, as the stereotypes with grain of truth go, Indian people aren't the war-mongering sort. Besides, being a democratic country with its share of ethnic/religious tensions, they wouldn't want to border up on Afghan regions with all their extra tensions - Kashmir valley is plenty for them.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Very very wrong!! India is one of the few countries that pledged "NO fist use". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use] Nuclear power is a deterrent for large conflicts, but small conflicts occasionally do take place (kargil for example).
>large Muslim majority areas were there at the heart of India
Such as?
>a country based on religion is a stupid idea for the 20th century (BTW that goes for Israel too.)
It was in the 20th century that Germany was a modern, liberal, constitutional democracy. Then Hitler got elected, and his government murdered millions of people belonging to a religious minority. So it's not surprising that religious minorities in other places feared for their well-being.
The Gujarat riots show that Muslim fears of state-sponsored anti-Muslim violence were not unreasonable.
>Riots happened on both sides but they were a lot worse on the Pakistani side.
Eyewitnesses have told me they were worse on the Indian side. Show me the data.
>What I do hate are the Muslim League and its philosophy which caused the partition and am virulently opposed to any philosophy which says people of different religions cannot stay together.
The Muslims of India justifiably feared that they would be disadvantaged as a religious minority. As for the philosophy of the Muslim League, here are the words of its leader, Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan:
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England, conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the Nation. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.
Even though the GDP per capita of Pakistan is higher than India it is skewed horribly.
Wealth and income are more unequally distributed in India (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality). According to Forbes, India has 36 billionaires, while Pakistan has none. India has a higher percentage of underweight children than Pakistan. Even though Pakistani women have more children, more Pakistani families nevertheless have the incomes to adequately feed their children than in India. According to the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7398750.stm
According to Unicef's latest State of the World's Children's report, India has the worst indicators of child malnutrition in South Asia: 48% of under fives in India are stunted, compared to 43% in Bangladesh and 37% in Pakistan.
>There is a class of feudal lords the Bhuttos, the Sharifs etc
Sharif isn't a feudal lord. His father, who came from a middle-class family, grew a cast-iron parts foundry into an industrial empire.